Behind Enemy Lines

"Behind Enemy Lines" is an effective thriller set in Bosnia. The fighter pilot Chris Burnett is part of the American peacekeeping force under NATO command, but he cannot really see the point of it all, and he lacks challenges. He gets more than enough of those when he and his partner Stackhouse are shot down after recording signs of Serbian military activity in a demilitarised zone.

Burnett's partner meets a grim fate, so Chris must try to reach the agreed pick-up point on his own. That is made harder by the fact that he has Serbian forces hot on his heels. They are out for only one thing, namely to kill him, because he has seen too much.

While Burnett fights to survive, his superior Admiral Reigart tries to organise a rescue team, but he is obstructed by his French superior, Admiral Piquet. Piquet does not think one man's life is worth jeopardising the entire peace process, so Reigart, very much against his will, has to order Burnett to continue into a safe zone. 'Safe' is putting it strongly, though, so Burnett's ordeal is far from over.

The film falls between two stools, for on the one hand it wants to give a nuanced and critical picture of the complex situation in the former Yugoslavia. That can be seen, for example, in the visuals with their lustreless earth colours. Nor is it hard to accept Piquet's argument that it is better to save a thousand tomorrow than one today, but for a cinema audience it is simply much easier to identify with the one right now than with the many later. So, not surprisingly, the film ends with a real patriotic action bang, in which the good guys take action and give the bad guys what they deserve.